Skip to main content

Check any barcode for microplastics

Our 132 researched pages are the products we could source properly. This is everything else: type a barcode and get an exposure estimate computed from the packaging materials on record, using the same five-component model.

The 8–14 digit number under the bars. Works on food, drink, and cosmetics. No account, nothing installed.

An estimate is not one of our researched pages

Researched page

Hand-written, sourced to named studies with their limitations attached, and graded A or B where a laboratory actually measured the product or its category. 132 of them.

Browse them →

Live estimate

Computed on the spot from crowdsourced packaging data. Capped at grade C — never A or B, because no laboratory has looked at it. Useful for choosing between two options; not a figure to quote.

Why the cap →

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a barcode tell you about microplastics?

It does not, directly — the barcode is a key. It looks the product up in Open Food Facts, a volunteer-maintained open database that records packaging at the component level, including which component touches the food. That material, plus the product category and how it is typically used, feeds the same five-component model behind every page on this site.

Why is the score capped at grade C?

Grades A and B mean a laboratory measured particle release from the product or its category. Label metadata is never that, however detailed it is. A live estimate resolves the material and the use conditions, which is grade C, or fails to resolve the material and falls to D. The cap is enforced in code rather than by editorial discipline, so no input can raise it.

What is the NOVA and Nutri-Score panel?

Food-quality data that Open Food Facts already holds for the product, shown because it is useful and you would otherwise open a second app for it. It is deliberately outside our score and labelled as theirs, not ours. Our number measures plastic contact and nothing else — quietly folding nutrition into it would stop it meaning anything precise.

My product is not in the database. Is that bad?

No. Open Food Facts is crowdsourced, so coverage is uneven and plenty of ordinary products are simply missing. A miss says nothing about the product. The app does not depend on a barcode being listed at all — it identifies packaging visually, which is also the only thing that works for cookware, drinkware, cutting boards and anything else that has no barcode.

Is this free?

Yes, with no account and nothing installed. The underlying data comes from Open Food Facts and Open Beauty Facts under the Open Database Licence, and we attribute it on every result.

For everything without a barcode

Cookware, drinkware, cutting boards, loose produce, the tub already in your fridge with the label rubbed off. The app identifies the product and its packaging from a photo, which is the only approach that covers them — and it scores the condition of the actual item, which no database can.